 Welcome to Pitch Grand Talk where insights meet innovation in the world of marketing. Today we are thrilled to have with us Ms Chandrika Jai, marketing director for Lenovo India. The same brand we have sure have used a laptop of once in our lives. So welcome Chandrika, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you very, very much Ritika, it's always a pleasure talking to you and I'm happy to talk to you again. Thank you so much and I mean you've just come up with a new series, the Brave New Art series and it's a season two of it. So congratulations on that first of all and I also wanted to understand the objective behind launching this Brave New Art 2.0 and how does it sort of align with the company's overall marketing strategy? Right, so Ritika, Brave New Art, why we are pleased to bring season two, right? But the objective of Brave New Art continues to remain being able to bring up authentic engaging useful content to the youth or the Gen Z audience who is of interest to us. And that was the fundamental of why we even came up with the idea of how do we merge art and technology together, how do we bring multiple influencers together to create content that could not just engage the audience but find a great way to explain what our feature and what our technologies are and demonstrate that feature and technology to the audience. So that continues to remain our objective, we've just found braver ways of bringing that information in season two and we are very, very excited about it. Right, and I'm sure there must have been some insights from season one also to this. I mean, how was the response like to Brave New Art one and what was some key insights that you gathered from the first season and how is that sort of, you know, helping you push the boundaries further when it comes to this season now? Ritika, that's a great question, right? Because it allows me to talk about so many things that we are very proud of. So Brave New Art was an experiment. While we wanted to get the attention, build authentic content and stuff like that, we brought multiple artists of different dimensions together. We merged the analog form of art with digital form of art and said, what can come off it? And what we learned is this works brilliantly. We learned that not only did you produce engaging content, it was content that our audience is really, really loved. Like in season one, we had explored being on Hotstar and I think in three days of us being on Hotstar, we had 10 million views on Hotstar. And that's just one of our mediums, right? We saw a lift in brand. We saw a lift in, we did a VLS study with Hotstar and we saw a lift happening there. The kind of engagement that we saw on the content pieces itself was very, very hard. So it gave us the confidence to say that this is successful. This is the right direction. It is content that's doing all the jobs that it's supposed to do. So it just gave us the courage, therefore, to become even braver in season two. So the learning was to say, right direction, push the button a lot more and take it to newer places and newer technologies. When it comes to marketing strategy, I mean, what are the strategies in place for promoting this particular series this time? Have you mentioned the Gen Z and the audience, but give me some detail on that and what is the marketing mix also for this? Sure. So the audience, like I said, right, continues to be the Gen Z audience or who we call the creator audience. But let me give you a little bit more context to why those audience. Like India has about 160 million young technology users who are of interest to us. And with the onset of social media and the various platforms that have come about, everybody believes that they are a content creator. And we are content creators in our own right, right? We also have data that says that people spend up to nine hours a week creating content. So this is the kind of audience that we want to appear to. And we believe that yoga is exactly that device that has to be taken to these audiences with the kind of features that the yoga device has. You know, we have AI Engine Plus, we have OLED in their display. We have the ability, we have something called as Lenovo X Power, which will like give you immense multitasking abilities. With all of this power fact in the device, we want to be able to take this device to the audience. And therefore, the media mix. So if you're speaking for the younger audience, the obvious media mix becomes social. YouTube is another area that we're doubling down on. And our experiment in season one, which we are redoing, is the hot star. So we started off being in hot star in season one. We've gone back to being in hot star in season two and it's working really well for us because we've, in January, we are the top 10, then we are in the top 10 list of English shows watched on hot star. Right. You mentioned hot star. My next question was going to be about this, that how are you sort of leveraging hot star to maximize your visibility and engagement also? Because I mean, there are certain advantages, you know, when you align with a digital streaming platform rather than just putting it out on your YouTube channel. So how is that working out for you? It's not just only hot star. I think we should look at it holistically, right? Like I told you, the mix has a tremendous amount of social, it has YouTube and then hot star. So within hot star, we have the ability, much like what connected TV brings to us, to target the right kind of audiences and the ability to serve up the content in multiple different ways. So there are the, there's the teasers and this time around we have the full content also that's put out there for people to view out of their own interest, which makes it for us a lot more viable because you actually see people picking up that content. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. In a broader context when we look at it, how does Lenovo, India sort of envision content pieces like this to build the brand's narrative and also its market position? I'm glad you're asking me that as well because, you know, our learning with Brave New Art has been that content is extremely critical for us to be able to tell our story and going back to the fundamentals of marketing, right? Marketing is about being able to tell a story and if you can't tell that story in ways that are meaningful to your audience then that's the best way to do it. So content is a very large portion of what we want to do and we are doing. If anything, it's only going to get bigger and better. I see this evolving not just for Yoga as a series, I see us doing a lot more for Legion, which is our gaming brand, Lock, which is our newest kid on the block and we're extremely excited about it so we want to build a lot more content on Lock. So you see content and influencer marketing play a fairly large role in how the brand tells its story as we go forward. Right, I mean, we talk a lot about the Gen Z and how this series in particular is directed to the young millennials or the Gen Zs but there's also a lot of studies coming up on how this demographic is sort of changing how consumers have been sort of consuming content also and also changing with brands. So in that context, what do you think sets Lenovo apart from its contemporaries because there are so many brands out there and all vying for the attention. Ritika, I think you're very right, right? Everybody is vying for the attention of this exact audience. You are very sought after, the entire generation is very sought after and I think the things that brands have to keep in mind is that this audience is a very clear point of view. It's an extremely intelligent audience and if brands can be one among you by understanding what works, what ticks, what does not tick that will go a long way for the brand and then also being as honest and authentic as possible goes a long way with this audience. So standing out among this audience is not easy like you said but these two things that I'm talking about is one being authentic and being one among you by understanding exactly what works with that audience goes a long way for this audience. Yeah, and in the same context, how do you sort of leverage your brand identity and values to connect with consumers, especially in diverse market segments? We are talking diverse demographics, we are talking diverse regions in India. So how does that work out? Look, I feel like brands are like people, right? Brands have to have a personality and that personality has to stay irrespective of who you're talking to. You might decide to go to different mediums, you might decide to build different kinds of content or different types of advertising but the brand personality much like I would have a personality and you would have a personality with and for Lenovo, we have the personality of being honest. We have the personality of being bold, we have the personality of being disruptive. So that continues to stay and to give you an example, I think Brave New Art is exactly that, right? As being able to not just create an idea that we bring art and technology together but if you see season two, the kind where we've pushed it, we bought a Kalari artist and then we bought a tilt artist together and say, can you both put together something that what can a Kalari artist do and how can that be translated into 3D art and what kind of content can come from the, how visually great can that content be? What kind of technology is required for that content? In my mind is not just disruptive, it is innovative and it is bold, which is exactly the brand personality. So it should reflect in my mind in everything that you do. And in my mind, it should also be consistent because brands like people should have the same consistent personality. We are developing our, we are delivering our promise to you each time. Right, absolutely. Looking ahead, what are some plans or aspirations for the brand in India and how do you plan to stay relevant and captivating to its audience for the long term? So Ritika globally, Lenovo is the number one PC brand, right? In India, we want to get to that global position sooner than later and to cement that the brand is an extremely large role. So our ambition for the brand in India is audacious if anything else. So this year, Lenovo intends to make a mark, intends to be out there and be seen. I will not devalue more information than that as we're going into the year itself, but I'm hoping you and I will get to talk a lot more about some of our upcoming work. I mean, I'm looking forward to that. And I mean, why we spoke of how Lenovo is going to be aggressive with what it's going to do. So how do you see your marketing strategy shifting for the next few years? Sure. So our marketing strategies, this is something I think we got on the journey of a couple of years ago itself. So Lenovo as a company has been investing a lot in our products and in our brand. And since last year, we've been doing a conscious effort to bring that to a lot of people. That will be a continued effort. So whether that is Lenovo through our products like Yuga and Legion and Lock or whether that's Lenovo the brand that brings multiple pieces of technology to you will still be of interest and you will see us building that through our products through the course of this year and hopefully in the years to come. Right. Brand is critical for us and we want to establish that brand and support the business in the market. As a marketer, if I had to ask you to chart down pivotal trends that will take shape this year, what would they be? Rama, so I'll break that down, right? From a technology standpoint, I think it is the year for technology companies. So I see AI being a really, really large trend that we're going to build on. Lenovo will have a very, how can I say, a dominant voice in this area. We are a company that believes in AI for all and we have a lot of products, solutions and services in this area that's going to come into play. And we also believe that they're positioned to be able to talk about it. So the trend of AI is going to exist in the category and Lenovo will have a large voice in this is one thing that I would like to call out. From a marketing standpoint, I do see, and a medium standpoint, I do see influencer marketing becoming more and more important and with micro influencers and micro influencers coming into play and now nano influencers coming into play. It's an extremely interesting segment that's allowing brands a lot of opportunity with content. So from a medium standpoint, it's influencer marketing and from a tech standpoint, I think it's going to be AI. Anything else that you'd like to add apart from whatever I've asked? Well, if you already watched the content that we produced in Brave New Art, then you know what we've done there. We've brought better artists to the floor, more visual release, it's great content, it's great work. I have a personal favorite among the two. If you want me to talk about it, I could, but otherwise I think we've covered a fair bit of content. I mean, thank you so much, Chandrika, for doing this today. Great insights, always a pleasure. So thank you. Ritika, thank you so much and a very happy Friday.